Royal Blood May Be Hidden Inside Decorated Gourd

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Carved pumpkins abound this Halloween season, but a decorated
gourd dated to 1793 may be the spookiest of them all. New
research determines it may contain the blood of Louis XVI, who
was executed by guillotine that same year.

The research, accepted for publication in the journal Forensic
Science International: Genetics, shows how genetic analysis
can provide new historical evidence independent of other
traditional sources of information.

The gourd, originally used to store gunpowder, was extensively
decorated on the outside with a flame tool. Burned into its
surface is the text: "Maximilien Bourdaloue on January 21st,
dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his
beheading."

"It is described in contemporaneous accounts that there was a lot
of blood in the scaffold after the beheading and that, in fact,
many people went there to dip their handkerchiefs in the blood,"
Carles Lalueza-Fox, lead author of the study and a researcher at
Spain's Institute of Evolutionary Biology, told Discovery News.

The handkerchief is now missing from the gourd, but Lalueza-Fox
and his team identified a brownish substance on the interior of
the dried squash. Biochemical tests determined that the substance
was dried blood.

Lalueza-Fox recalled that the king was known for his blue eyes,
featured prominently in paintings. He then got the idea of
looking for the blue eyes mutation within the dried blood's DNA.
The scientists found this mutation, at a gene called HERC2.

The researchers also analyzed other aspects of the blood's
genetics, such as its mitochondrial DNA profile, its Y chromosome
profile and some other markers. These all revealed that the DNA
profile "found inside the gourd is extremely rare in modern
Eurasians," suggesting that it may derive from a royal bloodline.

"We have conducted an analysis of the 'person' who is inside the
gourd for which we have historical evidence could be the king,
but for definite proof we need someone to compare (the findings)
with," Lalueza-Fox said.

As luck would have it, a probable organ from such an individual
exists. A heart located in a royal French crypt is thought to
belong to the king's son, Louis XVII, who died when he was just
10 years old. The heart was cut from the young boy's tumor-ridden
body and pickled after Louis XVII spent three horrific years in
Paris' Temple Prison.

Bodily remains of Marie Antoinette maternal relatives allowed for
genetic comparisons to the DNA in the heart using mitochondrial
DNA, which is passed down from a mother to her children.
Lalueza-Fox now hopes the gourd blood's DNA can be compared to
what's in the heart.

Together, the human remains are reminders of the brutal,
10-year-long French Revolution, which saw the collapse of the
country's absolute monarchy. The gourd even has the names of key
figures from the revolutionary period burnt into it, including
Georges Danton, Jean Paul Marat, Camille Desmoulins,
Louis-Sebastien Mercier, Joseph Ignace Guillotin, Maximilien
Robespierre, Bernard-Rene de Launay, Jacques de Flesselles and
Joseph Foullon.

Another box of text on the dried gourd gives credit to the
object's decorator, Jean Roux of Paris.

While storing blood or body parts in a decorated squash might
seem unlikely now, Lalueza-Fox said it wouldn't have been for the
time.

"It may sound strange today, but probably for a common person
witnessing the execution, one of these gunpowder gourds was an
acceptable receptacle to preserve something valuable," he
explained, suggesting that the gourds were long-lasting, common
containers during the 18th century in France.

Eske Willerslev, a Natural History Museum of Denmark evolutionary
biologist who is known for his pioneering work on ancient
genetics, told Discovery News that "the methodology seems solid"
for the new research on the blood.

"It's interesting that such studies of ancient remains of people
can actually be used to obtain molecular affiliations of the
person and infer some phenotypic traits," Willerslev added.